A Knee-Point in the Rotation-Activity Scaling of Late-type Stars with a Connection to Dynamo Transitions

Jyri J. Lehtinen, Maarit J. Käpylä, Nigul Olspert, Federico Spada

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

11 Citations (Scopus)
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Abstract

The magnetic activity of late-type stars is correlated with their rotation rates. Up to a certain limit, stars with smaller Rossby numbers, defined as the rotation period divided by the convective turnover time, have higher activity. A more detailed look at this rotation-activity relation reveals that, rather than being a simple power law relation, the activity scaling has a shallower slope for the low-Rossby stars than for the high-Rossby ones. We find that, for the chromospheric CaII H&K activity, this scaling relation is well modelled by a broken two-piece power law. Furthermore, the knee-point of the relation coincides with the axisymmetry to non-axisymmetry transition seen in both the spot activity and surface magnetic field configuration of active stars. We interpret this knee-point as a dynamo transition between dominating axi- and non-axisymmetric dynamo regimes with a different dependence on rotation and discuss this hypothesis in the light of current numerical dynamo models.
Original languageEnglish
Article number110
Number of pages8
JournalThe Astrophysical Journal
Volume910
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Apr 2021
MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

Keywords

  • Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

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